


Close

by ObsidianJade



Category: Cars (Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Maru being awesome, Team Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3441248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianJade/pseuds/ObsidianJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody got close to Blade.</p>
<p>(Or, Dusty muses a little on the Attack team’s lack of regard for personal space, Blade’s secrets get dug up, and the Fourth Wall gets a bit dented.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Cars/Planes Universe and all characters and settings contained are owned by Disney/Pixar. I make no claims to ownership and no profit from this work.

Nobody got close to Blade.

The Piston Peak Air Attack team, in general, was not big on maintaining personal space bubbles. Dipper didn’t seem to know what personal space _was_. Cabbie and Windlifter, for all their quiet, solitary natures, thought nothing of sitting so close together that Windlifter’s rotors bumped Cabbie’s propellers. And the Jumpers, Maru, and Patch seemed to spend as much time under the two’s respective wing and rotor spans as outside of them.

Plus there was the whole, y’know, _riding inside of Cabbie_ thing. That didn’t do much for enforcement of personal boundaries, either.

But nobody got close to Blade.

It wasn’t something that actively occurred to Dusty until his second year working with the Piston Peak team. He was splitting his time between Propwash Junction, Piston Peak, and his racing career in a manic sort of juggling act that left his head spinning worse than his propeller, and he thrived on it. Even the quiet moments were never dull.

Take this moment, for instance. The entire team, minus Blade, was clustered in the main hanger, tucked around and beneath one another in front of the television, enjoying the benefits of the Blu-Ray player that had appeared over Christmas, along with the entire series of CHoPs on disk. The scene playing out at the moment was Nick and Blade, side-by-side on a rooftop, and it took Dusty a moment to figure out what didn’t seem quite right with what he was seeing.

“Why are they so close?” he asked absently, and it wasn’t until someone hit pause and the perpetual bickering of the Jumpers fell silent that he realized he’d even spoken aloud. But it was a valid question; Blade and Nick were so close together on the screen that Nick’s rotors were resting over Blade’s roof, and their landing gear was nearly touching.

“Television blocking,” Maru replied, into the bewildered silence. “The show was shot for small screens, Blade and Nick both had to show up.” 

That earned him a slightly skeptical glance - even accounting for widescreen remastering, Nick and Blade combined only took up about two-thirds the width of the screen, and there was ample space on either side of them showing off a smoggy California city sky.

Dusty could feel Cabbie and Windlifter exchanging glances over his head, and Pinecone and Dipper both made noises that sounded like nervously squelched giggles. 

“The fanfiction doesn’t think so,” Dipper grinned, earning a groan from Cabbie and a sigh from Windlifter. 

“I don’t need to hear this,” Cabbie moaned, earning himself a knock in the tire from Dynamite. 

“Hey, they repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“And rightfully so. You know I never agreed with it. That still doesn’t mean I want to think about what those crazy online people are writing about a friend of mine.”

“PERVERTS!”

Thank you, Avalanche. 

Dipper squirmed a little, jostling Dusty with her folded wing. “It’s not perverted -”

“Look, AKAMrsCrophopper,” Maru snapped, ignoring Dipper’s indignant squawk, “what happened on that show, and off of it, is all in the past, and Blade doesn’t want to be reminded of it. Write whatever you want, but leave him alone about it.”

“Maru, you talk like you know a lot more than the rest of us about Blade’s past,” Dusty ventured when Dipper rocked backwards, chastised. He’d ignore the revelation of Dipper’s pseudonym until he could think about it without his brain exploding. Which might be never.

“That’s because I do,” Maru answered levelly, taking a casual sip of his mid-grade. “I’ve worked with Blade longer than any of you, remember.”

Several sets of treads and tires shifted against the concrete floor as everyone, with the exception of Maru and Cabbie, turned to look at Windlifter. Although Cabbie was the longest-term team member, Windlifter and Blade had arrived at the base within weeks of each other, and the rumor mill had it that they’d known each other before signing up. 

Windlifter twitched his rotors slightly in a gesture of offhanded dismissal, careful not to knock them against Cabbie’s nearest propeller. “Maru was working with Blade when I met them.”

And so everyone shifted again, this time turning to look at Maru. The little forklift deliberately ignored them all, taking another slow sip of his mid-grade, eyes still on the paused scene before him. 

“Look,” Maru sighed, when the staring didn’t let up. “I’’m serious about this. Write whatever you want - Blade can’t ban the fanfiction, no matter how much he’d like to sometimes, but don’t ever, _ever_ approach him about Nick. He doesn’t avoid talking about the past because of _happy_ memories, you know.” 

“But does that mean we’re -”

“Leave it,” Windlifter interrupted. Pinecone snapped her mouth shut, flinching a little behind her rake. 

“But if they were -” Dipper began.

“Leave it!” Windlifter snapped, not quickly enough. It was then that the others noticed that the hanger door was wide open, and Blade himself was framed within the doorway, the dull glow of the runway lights outside silhouetting him in stark blackness.

The television blinked over to a waiting screen, the faint click of the transition loud in the horrified, frozen silence of the hanger. 

Blade rolled wordlessly through the open door, inspiring a near-frantic scramble as the team parted before him, bumping against one another and even the walls as they tried to stay out of Blade’s space. 

The helicopter continued rolling forward until he was positioned in the middle of the floor, facing the waiting television screen. Even without his gaze on them, Dipper and Pinecone were visibly shaking. 

“What Nick and I were,” he began, his voice quiet but steel-hard, “is in the past. It will _remain_ in the past. Therefore, I would _appreciate_ -” the sarcasm dripping from that word was palpable - “if you would stop spilling my secrets, Maru.”

Even with everyone else quaking on their wheels, Maru only rolled his eyes and took another sip of his drink. “Oh, come out with it, Blade.”

The helicopter’s glare could have flash-frozen an acetylene torch. “Interesting choice of words, considering the discussion,” Blade growled, but he didn’t turn to leave, even when Maru smirked and shoved a can of mid-grade at him that he’d pulled from.... somewhere. 

When Blade didn’t move, Maru’s cynical expression slowly bled into something more compassionate, and he slowly rolled forward until he was under Blade’s rotor span. Very carefully, he reached out and lay one of his forks against Blade’s side, just in front of his hoist hatch. 

“Blade,” Maru said softly, “it’s been a long time, and forgetting hasn’t helped. Maybe you should try remembering?”

Blade sighed deeply, his eyes falling closed as the room sank into silence once again, everyone save those two virtually vibrating with tension. 

After a long moment, Blade straightened slightly, pulled the remote over with his front tire, and hit play again, watching his onscreen self and Nick debating on the roof.

“Nick and I were together,” he said quietly, even as his onscreen self gave his partner an affectionate glance. “Obviously, the public didn’t know, although -” he shot a sidelong glare at Dipper and Pinecone, both of whom flinched guiltily - “some of them did speculate.” 

Onscreen, Nick and Blade leapt into action, pulling apart so that their rotor spans didn’t intersect and taking off, still flying closer together than anyone sane could recommend. 

“The cast and crew knew, obviously,” Blade continued, and Maru snickered, mid-grade can held close to his mouth. 

On the screen, Blade pivoted in midair, the hatch on his side drawing back.

_“Hoist!”_ chorused the team, even their boss’s presence not enough to distract from the traditional drinking game.

“And with Maru being our onset medic -” 

Blade waited, impassive, as the entire Smokejumper crew, Dipper, Dusty, and Patch all sputtered and coughed wildly. 

“Eight-way spit take,” Maru grinned, taking a belated drink. “Nice. I think that’s a new record.”

“ _Onset medic?_ ” Dipper shrieked, loudly enough that Dusty flinched away from her, knocking over his own can of mid-grade. 

“Told ya I knew more than I was letting on,” Maru answered, halfway between irritated and smug, and settled himself more comfortably on his wheels, not budging from his place at Blade’s side. It was closer than anyone had been to Blade in years, outside of a life-threatening emergency. 

Blade ignored the little tug completely, sipping contemplatively at his mid-grade, his gaze on the television. “We had fun shooting that scene,” he remarked absently, turning everyone’s attention back to the screen.

Slowly, the others inched their way back towards their old spots, Cabbie and Windlifter settling in a cautious distance from their boss and the rest of the team tucking themselves in around their far sides. 

There was still a space around Blade that no-one but Maru dared fill, and the awkward tension that their chief had brought with him hung in the air as the episode continued. But it ebbed slowly away as the night went on, the calls for the drinking game coming fast and furious through a couple of particularly trope-laden episodes, and every now and again Blade or Maru would throw in a comment about the filming of a particular scene. 

There was still a space around Blade, Dusty thought, glancing at their chief. But, he smiled, taking another sip of his mid-grade, it was getting smaller.


End file.
